Title I Triumphs

As this semester started, smoother than any semester ever has before, I found myself pondering how lucky I am to teach at my school. I realized it has taught me to teach better than any other place could have.

At the end of last semester, while in an ending conference with one student, she pointed out that she was so glad our projector got stolen, because it meant we did lots of fun projects we might never have done. That pretty much sums up the wonder of teaching at our school.

Right at the nadir of our conversation.
Check out my kid's "methinks"!

\At our school, projectors get stolen. And in a weird way, it’s fantastic. It pressures the teacher to think of creative ways to get students information, ways that challenge them to trade for notes and read on scavenger hunts and build things, instead of being tied to a slideshow. Now, there are a ton of things that you can do with a projector that you can’t otherwise (today my IB class had a long online class chat about the best styles of parenting, a la Mary Ainsworth, complete with long-winded digression on who had made their nickname “God” and kept challenging everyone’s statements—my kids are pretty dumb sometimes and apparently still can’t recognize my style of wit), but for a beginning teacher like me to be forced to teach without it for three months, utterly changed the way I see teaching. The focus had to be on the students, and their interactions, rather than on me and the front of the classroom. The ratio of frontal teaching to group projects and discussions spun rapidly in a positive direction, and I'm going to keep it there even with a projector.

At our school, children often lack a stable home life. The adults who are supposed to take care of them quite often are in jail, or dead, or simply gone. This is tragic and causes all sorts of obstacles for their development. And yet, every day is a triumph. The child who walks into my class forty minutes late makes my heart leap; I know he missed the bus and walked two miles to get to school. The child who slams out of class silently gives me hope; just last month she would have screamed vulgarities, but now she’s using the coping techniques we worked out. The child who takes his father’s death and uses it to fuel his educational drive; the child who learns from her time in prison and is four months from graduation; the children who demand that we talk out Ferguson and the children who challenge every psychological study on the effects of poverty on development by citing their own experiences and the children who school me in what is possible for them make me a better person each and every day; they erase the prejudice from my heart and tolerance for injustice from my worldview. Those who succeed, succeed wildly and celebrate their successes with more elation than my entire high school had at graduation.

I see you taking a selfie. And I will photobomb it. And make you email it
to me. And put it on as the background for the class slides tomorrow.
Have we learned our lesson? No phones in class!

At our school, students don’t always bring their own drive to class. Sometimes it’s the pressure of having to provide for their family, sometimes it’s a history of failure, sometimes it’s a simple teenage lack of giving a care, but students don’t always come ready to learn. The one thing that can push them past that, on a really bad day, is their relationship with their teacher. If we have built up our compassion for them, if we really know them, if we share ourselves and our own stories and make time to prove that they matter to us, then they will do what is right for them simply because we ask it. Sometimes because we beg it. But we are forced to get to know our children, and that is a blessing. Because they have mystic stories, and extraordinary talents, and quirky selves, that enrich every passing second.

So, yes, a day at our school feels much more challenging than it might at another. Growing up, I didn’t have near so many helicopters circling on a regular basis. Growing up, my alma mater never made it into the news except for announcements about the school play. Growing up, we didn’t walk into school to see our state flag flying upside down by accident, and point it out to hear the principal comically comment, “Huh. Just that kind of day. I guess that we are in distress.” (He’s a funny man. I think his sense of humor is keeping us afloat).

But a day at our school is also always a day of extraordinary, a day when hundreds of children face unbeatable odds, and some of them, inevitably (because after all, they don’t know the math), beat them. And we teachers, we watch it happen, and cheer ecstatically on the sidelines, and try to spur kids up off the bench.  And sometimes, just sometimes, they win the game.

College-bound wall of pride: the small crew of seniors I teach are already hearing back and making plans.